Three Episcopal churches in the city are in the process of merging into a single parish.
The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 160 Rock St., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 125 Mason St., and the St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Partnership, 711 Middle St., held a covenant-signing worship service Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
The new Episcopal parish will be named the Church of the Holy Spirit, located at 160 Rock St.
A fourth Episcopal church, St. Luke’s, 315 Warren St., has decided against joining the merger at this time.
“Over the past few years, none of those churches was going particularly well,” said the Rev. Wallace Gober, who was interim pastor of St. John’s-St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.
“They were doing okay, but it was the decision of the people that they could do more of the work of the church if they pooled their resources,” Gober said.
In the mathematics of church mergers 3 X 50 rarely equals 150. And 3 X 1 doesn’t equal 3. While mergers should work in theory, from what I’ve read and observed they only rarely work in practice. What you end up doing when you combine three established congregations is bringing three different herds of sacred cows into a more confined space. There are better ways. Church leaders might want to read Stephen C. Compton’s book, ‘Rekindling the Mainline’ (2003, The Alban Institute) before launching any more of these well-intentioned but poorly conceived ventures.
Having once led a merger that my synod declared one of their few “successes,” I would never do it again. The amount of energy required to bring two different leadership groups together under one vision for the future would have been better spent either 1) trying to revitalize one of the congregations or, 2) (an even better idea), launching a new start.
Bringing together three groups of people already accomplished in pushing their congregation into decline won’t yield a whole lot …
Brian
This is positive spin at its worst. The reason for this merger is that the TEC and the Diocese have left the historic faith. If they preached the gospel message they would be growing not shrinking. As requested by the PB of TEC those who disagree with the “new leading of the Holy Spirit” have left as they did in Newark.
Many years ago, our diocesan bishop got the idea that because one church had no room to go, and a $90k mortgage, he would close another BOOMING church, and send those people to help pay off the mortgage.
Nevermind that the booming church was completely built, paid for, and the congregation had been more than a year since taking ANY diocesan money, and were intending to ask for parish status.
Well, the priests were sent to special schools to learn how to pull the “merger” off. And they did a pretty good job of selling it.
Result of the vote, 54 – 52 to “merge”..
Result of the “merger”? Only about 11 percent of the people “merged”. At least 35% left the E. Church altogether.
The booming church was closed, and the bishop tried to use the property for a school. NO DICE, the property was only to be used as a church. RESULT, the church in an ideal, high income neighborhood, now belongs to the Nazarene Church. The “mortgaged” church still struggles.
This was about 1969-70. Several of my friends are still around, all of them remembering what happened and why.
That’s what I know about “church-mergers”, more often than not, they have little effect except to drive people off.
Gloria in SC
ps: I was the organist at the closed church, my husband was Treasurer. That’s why I know first hand.
Well, if as it seems likely that merging congregations is a less than effective means of going forward, then in the wonderful ways of the progressive, then it will work if we put more money and effort into it.
If 2 parishes merge at less than the sum of the parts, then the solution is obvious. Throw in a 3rd or 4th parish into the mix and voila, critical mass will have been reached and from all those contributing members, enough folk ought to stick to form one viable parish? Right?
The dynamics that has led to the three churches’ decline will still be in force. The new church will have a membership of ~100. This does not take it out of the critical level.
It is interesting that I cannot get any of the diocese of Massachusetts’ stats for the past two days. All the neighboring dioceses, but not Massachusetts.
No matter the spin, there is something UNhealthy and UNinviting about the new thing that it can’t sustain itself. Merger is nothing but a flesh-eating disease trapping the last portion of its meal for later.